tue of the words of the priest, and present at the same time in countless different parts of the world, without being multiplied, and received by us in the shape of our natural food without being dissolved in the stomach. We shall understand (but not fully comprehend) the great mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity; how the Son is generated by the Father from all eternity, and shall be so generated for all eternity, although the Father is not before the Son; how the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, and how these three distinct Persons are but one God. It was a sublime knowledge of this kind that made David cry out rejoicing beforehand in spirit: “I studied that I might know this thing; it is a labor in my sight;” all my investigations result in nothing; I cannot understand it “until I go into the sanctuary of God.”[1] I must wait till then, and I shall understand everything. A single small ray, the merest spark of infused knowledge (although it is in no way to be compared to the light of glory by which we shall see God face to face), wonderfully illuminated the mind and intellect of a weak woman, St. Theresa. A similar ray enlightened St. Ignatius Loyola, a soldier accustomed to the use of the sword, but not at all to the pen. And what have not the apostles done with a single spark of this light that they received from the Holy Ghost? Oh, what shall not then be disclosed to us, what shall we not learn in the kingdom of heaven when we shall see God clearly as He is in Himself? This should be to us as great a source of joy as it was to David.
And in having all natural knowledge. Again, the mind shall fully grasp and understand all the natural knowledge, all the qualities, powers, virtues, and efficacy of all creatures that have ever been created by God from the beginning of the world. No matter what I may now learn and know in this life of the arts and sciences, or how profound my knowledge may be, there must still be an infinite number of things that I know nothing about. For while studying one science, I forget or lessen the knowledge I have of another that I learned formerly. The influence of things present, and the images we form of them often destroy altogether the memory of past events. But at the first sight of God, the Source of all truth, knowledge, and science, I shall understand and know more than all the most learned theologians on earth ever knew, although they devoted
- ↑ Existimabam ut cognoscerem hoc, labor est ante me. Donec intrem in sanctuarium Dei.—Ps. lxxii. 16, 17.
